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study, they must be acknowledged to be deficient in beauty, 
arising from the want of unity of expression, — the attributes 
of the circular and pointed styles being totally different. 
Architecture may be considered as a language ; whatever 
its style, the details form the words of which that language 
consists. That man would be thought insane indeed, who 
attempted to compose a poem in a language with whose rudi- 
ments he was but imperfectly acquainted; but the attempt 
would be no more insane than that of an architect attempting 
to design a sacred structure in the Gothic style, without a 
practical acquaintance with its real principles. That an 
ignorance of these principles does frequently exist, is evident 
from the strange anachronisms observable in many modern 
structures, in which the Early English, Decorated, and Per- 
pendicular styles are found ridiculously introduced together, 
(but never blending,) bespeaking the absence of taste and of 
sound judgment, and above all, the want of antiquarian 
feeling in the designers. 
In order to avoid these anachronisms, personal investiga- 
tion of our ancient edifices is absolutely necessary; the prin- 
ciples of the pointed style can never be learnt from books, 
since they merely exhibit the style synthetically. Buildings 
are the books which must be studied ; in them alone can we 
trace the little elegancies of composition with which the works 
of the miscalled " dark ages" are replete. 
We must first analyze the details, then study the whole 
composition, and until this be done, our minds cannot be 
imbued with the feelings of the master-spirits of former 
ages. Until this be done, and we have imbibed the feelings 
by which they were actuated, Gothic architecture will be to 
us a dead language. But imbibing their feelings, we shall no 
longer become their copyists, but their successful imitators ; 
we shall no longer imagine that every pointed building 
